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STORIES:
The
crushing of the American Dream = Debt of all kinds - (www.nytimes.com) A CERTAIN drama has become
familiar in the United States (and some other advanced industrialized
countries): Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, preying
especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. They use their
political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. Debts
mount. Journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we
let this happen again? Officials promise to fix things. Something is done about
the most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has
abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon. The crisis that is about to
break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the
housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to
America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the
ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down — some to a point
even lower than where they began.
Student
debt weighs on overall economy - (www.usatoday.com)
The loans that gave college
students the funds they needed to move forward in life are now holding them
back. Mary Knauff would like to start saving money, for retirement or for some
future spending. But because of about $28,000 in student loans, which she's
paid down to about $17,000, the 2010 Xavier University graduate will continue
living paycheck to paycheck. "It's sort of disheartening," said
Knauff, 25. "I knew going in that I was going to a private school.
Especially when you're trying to get started, when loans take up a third of
your living expenses, it's frustrating." That delay in buying cars and
condos, in starting families and savings accounts, reveals the true cost of student
debt, to graduates such as Knauff and to the larger economy.
Bankia compensation qualms signal loss of faith in Spain's
banks - (www.reuters.com) Many duped savers at Spanish
lender Bankia (BKIA.MC) are shunning a state-supervised
compensation scheme in favor of expensive lawsuits, prolonging a mis-selling
scandal and complicating efforts to restore faith in the banking system. The
disputes over mis-selling at Bankia and other nationalized banks have created a major headache
for the government as it tries to take the next step in their rescue, imposing
large losses on holders of junior debt. It set up the arbitration process to
try to end daily protests by some of those debt holders - elderly savers who
say they were mis-sold complex debt products as safe, high-interest deposit
accounts. But many people caught up in Bankia's rescue see it as a trick to stop
them getting their money back.
Rome protest turns up heat on new PM Letta - (www.bloomberg.com) Thousands of people protested
in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging
new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the
country out of recession. "We hope that this government will finally start
listening to us because we are losing our patience," said Enzo Bernardis,
who joined the sea of protesters waving red flags and calling for more workers'
rights and better contracts. Less than a month in power, Letta is trying to
hold together an uneasy coalition between his center-left Democratic party and
the center-right People of Freedom, led by former prime minister Silvio
Berlusconi.
Insight: The fight for North Dakota's fracking-water market
- (www.reuters.com) In towns across North Dakota,
the wellhead of the North American energy boom, the locals have taken to
quoting the adage: "Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting."
It's not that they lack water, like Texas and California. They are swimming in
it, and it is free for the taking. Yet as the state's Bakken shale fields have
grown, so has the fight over who has the right to tap into the
multimillion-dollar market to supply water to the energy sector. North Dakota
now accounts for over 10 percent of U.S. energy output, and production could
double over the next decade. The state draws water from the Missouri River and
aquifers for its hydraulic fracturing, the process also known as fracking and
the key that has unlocked America's abundant shale deposits. The process is
water-intensive and requires more than 2 million gallons of water per well,
equal to baths for some 40,000 people. As in all booms, new players race in to
meet the outsized demand. At the heart of this battle is a scrappy
government-backed cooperative, conceived to ensure fresh water in an area where
its drinkability is compromised.
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